Neither of us goes to anything, which makes us invisible here

Neither of us goes to anything and neither of us is going to start. That single fact makes us effectively invisible here, because in this city a person exists once somebody has stood next to them at a social and formed a view, and nobody has ever stood next to either of us.

Forty two and forty four, Salford, together fifteen years and doing this for nine. We are not shy exactly. We are simply not group people. We have four friends, we see them individually, we have never once enjoyed a room containing more than about six, and all of that was true long before any rope turned up in our lives.

What we have concluded is that we are not outside the scene here by accident. It is genuinely built around being present and being seen, which suits most people and is a perfectly reasonable way for a community to work. It just excludes anybody with no wish to be in the room at all, and there are rather more of us than the room imagines.

So we are looking for the other quiet ones. Another couple, or a single person, who would come to our house for dinner and would not require any of us to be sociable on a larger scale than that. Somebody we could know for years without ever attending a single thing together.

Not a third and not an arrangement. If your idea of getting to know a couple involves meeting them at something first, we will never meet, and we are entirely at peace with that.